I don’t know how many people will remember last year, when I got seriously angry about the closure of my local Library, the Carnegie Library, in Herne Hill, South London. Well, we’ve had some good news at last. After a year with no service whatsoever, we’ve got it back! The Carnegie Library has reopened! There has been much celebratory coverage of this in the papers and on local TV News programmes. The Head of the Council has been doing the smiley, happy, noddy thing for the cameras again and everything in the garden is wonderful! We have access to our books once more! Lovely. Whoop-de-do!!!!!

Except, it’s not lovely. Well, not lovely for everyone anyway. There is now no access to the Library available for wheelchair users, or people with mobility impairments, or for some older people, or for all those people who cannot climb the many, steep stone steps up to the main Library entrance. We have been excluded. Admittedly, access never was great but it used to be, at least, be possible. There was a bell at the bottom of the steps you could ring to alert the Librarians to your presence and then, one of them would come out to you, accompany you round to a side entrance and let you in so you could use a small lift to the main library, but that isn’t there any more. As I say, it wasn’t ideal but it was, at least, possible to get in to choose your own books or to do some research or to find information about local amenities or to do anything else Library related you wanted to do. But no longer. Now, that access has gone. Lambeth Council, in its infinite wisdom, seems to think that what the people of Herne Hill REALLY want is a much smaller, inaccessible Library and, yet another blinking gym. The entrance we used to use in order to access the lift is now the entrance to the building site that will become the gym, there is, no longer, a lift available and there is no alternative entrance for us.

Great.

According to our wonderful Council, the Library that was gifted to the people of Herne Hill by Andrew Carnegie, opened in 1906, and loved and used by local people, young and old alike, for more than a century, is no longer needed. What we all REALLY want is a gym and a much-reduced, inaccessible, Library service. Sure, the library will, for now, at least, be open to some people, for short periods, but not for everyone. People with mobility impairments get left outside, in the cold, the wind and the rain. Many people who used the Library regularly will now not be able to get in at all. And, for those people who can gain access, we don’t get a full-time Librarian the way we used to, we get a member of the Gym staff instead. And some security guards. And a phone to the Librarian in Brixton. So, if you can get in at all, and you are looking for a specific book or for some essential information, or for any sort of help whatsoever, you have use a phone to have a Librarian a couple of miles away, tell you which book you want, what shelf it’s on and what it looks like. Now that’s going to work all fine and dandy – NOT. I am a qualified Librarian myself. I spent three years at University training for my qualification. No-one will convince me that an untrained member of staff from the gym and a phone will be able to cope for longer than a day or two. And don’t even get me started on access for people with hearing impairments who can’t use phones at all. You won’t like it.

No. I think that this so-called grand ‘re-opening’ is not a true re-opening. We, the people of Herne Hill, have been sold a pup. Given that there are Local Government Elections less than three months away in May, I am pretty convinced that this ‘re-opening’ is little more than a cynical pre-election publicity stunt. The people of Herne Hill want their wonderful Community Amenity back the way it used to be and we don’t want a gym. What we want a full-time, fully staffed, fully accessible library full of books and dvds and local information and local interest groups and joy and love and laughter. If you want us to consider giving you our vote, give us back the Library Andrew Carnegie gave to us and we’ll think about it.

And please would you make sure that it is fully accessible to all of us who want to use it.

I just watched a Channel 5 report, broadcast yesterday, about a couple who both WANT to work but are unable to do so thanks to the wife’s impairments. She is not physically fit enough to work so, as a result, she claims Welfare Benefits but she’s now being punished for this. The little money she gets is being cut and cut and cut gain and there’s nothing she can do about it. She cannot go out to work, she’s too disabled to do so. All she is being told to do by politicians is to get a job, only this week Theresa May said “Working is the best way out of poverty” – what part of SHE CAN’T don’t they understand?

As someone who is in a similar situation, this report rang very true. It’s all cuts and it’s so hard when there’s nothing you can do about it, you just CAN’T go out to work. I am largely restricted to a bed in my front room thanks to my MS and the restrictions it places on me and it feels like I am being punished by the Government for daring to be sick. I didn’t ask for this, it happened and, like so many other Disabled People, there was nothing I could do about it. I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1984. Just like the vast majority of impairments, this was not my fault and there was nothing I could have done to stop it, it just happened and I was left to get on with it as best I could. Very sad but life goes on. I’ve been a full-time wheelchair user since 1992/3ish but I still managed to work, full time, until 3 years ago when infected pressure sores put me into hospital and then this bed. I WANT to work. I LOVED working. I loved my job and the camaraderie I found with my colleagues. I loved what I did every day. In my view, it was the best job ever. I was an Information Officer with a National Charity and I loved being able to help other people but, unfortunately, I physically, I can’t do it any longer. My impairment put a premature stop on my ability to go out to work. I didn’t choose this lifestyle, no-one in their right mind would, I’d love to change it but I can’t. Having minimal money is bad enough but being told, continually, by politician after politician that I should get a job if I want to make my life better is just rubbing salt in the wound. What part of “I CAN’T” don’t they understand?

And then there are disabled people who WANT to work and who TRY to get a paid job so they can work their way out of poverty, as we are told to do, but they are being prevented from doing so by Society’s attitude toward disabled people. We often have no problem finding a volunteer role but, for some reason, these employers don’t want to pay us to do the same jobs. They are happy to take us on as volunteers but, as soon as the possibility of a salary is mentioned, heads start to be shaken and the excuses rain down. A friend has just said to me “I also want to work and get out and do part time. I applied for various jobs after leaving college in 2005ish. No-one wanted to know so I stopped applying and did volunteering instead but that doesn’t solve the money issues, it just gets you out of the house.” And that begs another question – if a disabled person is perfectly capable of successfully holding down an unpaid, volunteer role, what is it about their impairment that makes employer think they would be unable to hold down the same or a similar role if it was paid?

How much longer are Disabled People going to be told to get a job and work our way out of poverty? How much longer are w going to be blamed for something that is not our fault. We didn’t ask to be sick so stop punishing us for it, after all Mrs May, next week it could be you. Listen to what we are telling you and stop telling us to do the impossible. We KNOW that working for a living would be the best route out of poverty for us but, for many of us, work is an impossible dream. Our impairments are stopping us from doing what you are forever telling us to do. Getting a job and working our way out of the poverty you are inflicting on us.

So, for the last time, what part of ‘we’d love to work our way out of poverty but we can’t’ don’t you understand?

Yet again, disabled people are being blamed for non-disabled people’s lack of attention. Yet again it’s us who are at fault, not them.

I have just watched a news report talking about the need for a new training video for scooter and electric wheelchair users to help reduce accidents with pedestrians. Apparently, there have been several incidents where bad scooter driving has got someone hurt so, obviously, we need to be trained to use our mobility aids more responsibly, but what about badly trained pedestrians? How about a training video for pedestrians?

Ask any wheelchair user or scooter user and we all have stories to tell about accidents and near misses caused by other people not taking care or looking where they are going but where we have been blamed. There’s the people who walk around texting or reading social media and not looking where they are going. People on their phone talking to their friends and not paying attention to what is happening around them. People who are walking in front of you who suddenly just stop, without warning, so you run into the backs of their legs. People who are so engrossed with the conversation they are having with their companions that they are blind to what is going on around them

And, my personal favourite, the people who just barrel out of shops without a care in the world and without looking, walk straight into you and it’s your fault. It happens every day on every street I the country and it is ALWAYS it’s us who caused the problem by not looking where we’re going, never them.

Why is it always OUR fault and US that need training? What about training for schoolkids on using pavements responsibly that they may be able to show their parents and remember into teenage and adult life. When I was a child we had the Tufty Club coming into my school to teach us road safety how to use our bikes properly, how about a Tufty Club for pedestrians? School is where you are supposed to learn valuable life lessons, surely learning how to be considerate of other pedestrians is a life lesson we should all learn, Walkers and wheelies like. How about an ad campaign on the TV and in our cinemas reminding people that responsible pedestrians should look down as well as straight ahead and keep their eyes on the pavement. Doing that may have and added benefit and even help people avoid stepping in dog poo and getting chewing gum on the bottom of their shoes as well.

Contrary to popular belief, wheelchair users and scooter users are not driving around looking for pedestrians we can target and squish, we are doing the same as you and going about our daily business as best we can. We are not waiting round every corner with evil grins on our faces and score cards in our hands counting daily hits. We’re going to work, going shopping, meeting up with friends for lunch, taking a ‘walk’, having a life, just like you.

I am happy to acknowledge that wheelchair and scooter users need more training too. When I was given my first electric wheelchair at my local NHS wheelchair clinic the only training I had was a five minute jaunt round the clinic’s carpark learning how to get my chair up and down the kerb. No higher than 2 – 3 inches or I’d tip over and fall out. Nothing about dealing with people walking into you and then tutting nothing about watching out for people opening doors and walking straight into you, nothing about people paying more attention to their phone than to the world around them. Five minutes later I was off home in the accessible ambulance to start my new life in my local area as a terror on wheels. It was a case of practice makes perfect, no license needed. You can buy a scooter or a wheelchair on the internet, wait for delivery then jump on and drive off without a care in the world and with no instruction at all apart from how to turn the thing on and off and where to plug in the charging cable. This training thing works both ways and we need more than that too.

Come on folks, let’s ALL try and consider the world around us as we move about it. Sure, wheelchair/scooter versus walker accidents will happen but please acknowledge, it’s your fault as much as it is ours. Let’s all try looking where we’re going and trying to consider others as well as ourselves. Let’s have training for all pedestrians, not just wheelies. We’re ALL at fault, not just US.

I experienced a modern modern day problem yesterday which I think we, as a society, really need to think about pretty urgently.

I am someone who has one of those pendant alarm buttons which are issued to older and disabled people so we can call for help should we fall or have an urgent medical issue, where we need medical assistance when we are on our own if fall and injure ourselves or become ill and need rescuing.

And, most of the time, this is a good plan, just as long as it all works smoothly. But, and it’s a big but, these alarm buttons rely on us having a working landline connection and, unfortunately, that is not always the case as I have now discovered.

Briefly, I live in South East London and get my telephone and Internet service provided through Sky, which is usually fine. However, yesterday evening we had a massive power outage thanks to some rats which eat through some fibre optic cables somewhere, knocking out both the phone and the Internet for thousands of us across the entire area. No phone, no Internet, nothing. Silence. Very annoying for most people anyway but, for those of us who have alarm call buttons for emergencies, this meant we were unable to use them to call for help, should we need it, from around 11pm last night until about 10.30/11am this morning.

Twelve whole hours when anything could have happened.

In my case, this issue was compounded by the fact that my mobile had run out of battery and needed charging but that’s my fault and it’s now connected to my charger, doing it’s thing but there must have been other people who don’t have mobiles at all who experienced the same outage as me. So what were they supposed to do?

Only this week I learnt about someone in one of my Facebook groups who, having knocked over a bottle of bleach onto the floor, fell out of her wheelchair and ended up lying in the resultant corrosive puddle for several hours before she was rescued, who now is in hospital with serious chemical burns on her arm and chest. Thirty five years ago my own grandmother, who was in her eighties at the time, died in hospital following a fall in her kitchen when she broke her hip and lay injured on the floor for many hours before being found. Sure, had either Grandma or the Facebook wheelchair user had an alarm button they should have been able to call for help, but only if the system was working.

Which, last night, it wasn’t.

I’m lucky, usually my daughter is here as she lives with me and last night, because she’s away, a friend stopped over for the night so there was someone I could have yelled to if I needed them but, what would I have done had I fallen out of bed, been unable to use my alarm button and my friend had not been here? Lain on the floor, all night, alone, cold, possibly seriously injured with a broken arm, leg or hip until my carers came for their morning visit and found me.

It’s the stuff of nightmares and doesn’t bear thinking about.

So, my question is, are we too reliant these days on the pseudo safetynet of technology and, if we are, what can we do about it? Is there a solution? Perhaps Local Authorities should have an emergency team who are on call, in the event of a techno failure, to go round to everyone who has an alarm button to make sure they are ok. Possibly, but probably impractical and certainly expensive. Maybe those of us who are issued with an alarm call pendant, which we have to pay for, should also be issued with an emergency mobile phone that the button is also linked too so that, in the event that the landline goes down, the button links to the mobile service provider instead. More practicle but also expensive but it has to be better than than having no backup plan whatsoever

I don’t know what the solution is but somebody could have ended up seriously ill, injured or even dead thanks to yesterday’s power outage. We need to think fast and we need to think of something now before it’s too late.

As I said in my previous blog, now we have a female Doctor, in the future I would rather like to see a disabled actor play the Doctor.

I think this would be good.

But, this has led to a long and involved discussion, on my favourite Social Media platform, ‘Facebook’, with several disabled people about the normalisation of disability. There’s a group, including me, who are saying that disability and disabled people should be celebrated and included and seen as just part of the vast panoply of human existence that is life and then there’s another group, people who are also disabled in some way, who are saying that being disabled is definitely bad and that an impairment or disability means that something is wrong. They are saying that, if they had the opportunity to become part of the non-disabled world then they would jump at the chance and grab it with both hands. They are saying that they would like to get ‘better’. For me, the question is better than what. Better as opposed to worse? Worse than what?

Well, for a kick off, I don’t see being disabled as meaning that there is something wrong with me at all. I just see it as meaning I am different and, as a result, I don’t want to get ‘better’ in myself at all. I want to see the world get better. I want to see society get better. I want to see attitudes towards disability and what disability means get better, but, I am someone who has become disabled, I was not born this way. Maybe my views would be different if I’d always had my impairment. I am someone who has travelled from the non-disabled world into the disabled community so I’m part of the group that can see it from both sides of the fence.

I was 24 when I was diagnosed with my MS. For me, my disability is not an impairment or something that is wrong with me, rather, it’s a failure by society to be able to cater for me and my needs and ior people like me. My MS is an illness that I contracted from who knows where which means that I have now lost the ability to stand and walk and look after myself on my own and has left me stuck in a bed most of the time and using a wheelchair to get around when I’m up instead of using my legs. It means I have carers coming in daily to get me up and wash me and dress me and feed me and cater for my needs and put me back in bed in the evening. It is a part of me but it does not define me. On the inside I am still the same me I’ve always been, I’m just me with MS as opposed to me without MS. The real me, the internal me that is ME, has not changed. I didn’t walk into my GP’s surgery the day I got my diagnosis as one person and come out as a completely different person. I came out as the same person, just as a person who now had MS and was therefore labelled as being disabled. That was all that changed. My label. The essential me was still the same.

The thing is though, is that the essential me has had to change over the years thanks to that diagnosis. I have had to learn to stand my ground and do my own thing my way and to fight for what I now believe to be right. I have had to learn to fight to be part of a world that was once believed was mine by right. I have had to learn to fight to be part of a world which, in some way, doesn’t seem to want me to be a full member of it any more. I have had to learn how to fight the urge to apologise for being me and having needs that are different and seen to be, in some way, as abnormal.

One of the questions disabled people get asked all the time is whether or not we’d like to be ‘cured’. Now this is something that must, in my opinion, has to be different depending on whether or not you were born disabled or if you became disabled later on. It also must depend on whether or not you experience pain as an upshot of your impairment. If you ask me, I don’t think I would like to be cured. I’m perfectly happy as I am. I’m not really in any pain, I just can’t walk or stand or look after myself any more. And, if the world was set up differently then that wouldn’t matter at all.

I don’t think I want to go back to how I was in my pre MS days because I like the me I am now a whole load better than the me I was before. I have met people since I became disabled that I’d never have met otherwise, done things I’d never have done, been involved with things I could never have been involved with, learnt things about life I would never have learnt about without that diagnosis. Before my MS came aong I was shy and quiet and a bit afraid of sticking my neck out and voicing an opinion but the disabled me with MS is confident, loud, not afraid to say what I think, able to hold my own in an argument and I think it’s the fight I have had to have with life due to my MS that has helped make me this way.

I’m not saying that my life as a non-disabled person would have been any better or any worse than my life as a disabled person but it would definitely have been different. Would that have been a good different or a bad different? Well there’s the question. I don’t know. All I know is that, one way or the other, it would just have been different and I’m not sure if that is a different I would want it to be.

I’m currently having a fascinating conversation on Twitter with some fellow Whovians discussing the big reveal today for the 13th regeneration of Dr Who.

We’ve got the usual posts and suggestions for a female Doctor or a Black Doctor but I suggested the possibility of a Disabled Doctor.

And I got this instant response ‘Get what you’re saying, but why would the Doctor’s regeneration leave him with a disability? Unless it went wrong, future story perhaps?’.

My hackles were raised – doesn’t this reply indicate the issue in a nutshell – ‘unless it went wrong’.

This implies disability is bad.

How about equality?

If a Black Dr or a Female Dr or an LGBT Dr is not a stretch, why would having a Disabled Dr mean that something went ‘wrong’? Where’s the big issue here? What’s the difference?

A friend has pointed out that the Doctor goes to places throughout the universe and, in that case, for some races/groups of Aliens, couldn’t being regenerated as a human be seen as something going ‘wrong’? If those aliens saw having six legs, two heads or wings and a tail as ‘normal’ then, being regenerated in human form as completely wrong. If the Doctor regenerated as a Dalek, Cyberman or Sontaran then, for humans, that would be ‘wrong’ but for another Dalek, Cyberman or Sontaran it would be right and nothing to comment upon. Being human, in that instance, would be the abnormality.

I think this is actually yet another example of many people’s inability to deal with the concept of disability as just an alternative form of ‘normal’ . People don’t like to think of disability as anything else apart from being ‘wrong’ when it’s actually their attitude that’s wrong. If I’m out and about with a group of other wheelchair users, we’re our own normal and any upright or walking companions are the ones who are different. A group of hearing impaired people chatting away using BSL are no different from a group of French or German people speaking their own native tongues to one another, they just can’t hear the words or voices, rather, they just see them instead. Visually impaired people reading books with their fingers, in Braille, are not doing it wrong, they are just doing it as an alternative form of right, just as people who are not visually impaired reading print or handwriting is right. We’re still seeing non-disabled actors ‘cripping up’ for roles in films as disabled characters. We have heard, only this week, of people being unsure about talking to disabled people in case they offend us. We’re seeing paralympic athletes being seen as ‘superhuman’, ‘brave’ and ‘inspirational’. Why? Disabled people are, after all, just people, we’re just people who are different in some way to what is perceived by the majority to be ‘normal’. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with any of us, we’re all just different and it’s time to start seeing ‘different’ as ‘normal’. We need to start seeing people just as people, regardless of their gender, sexuality, colour or disability. Sure, the Doctor recently had a storyline where he was blind for a couple of episodes, but he got ‘better’. Baby steps in the right direction but we’re nowhere near ‘there’ yet.

So, do I think we’ll get a disabled Dr for number 13? Almost certainly not. I still don’t think people are ready for it. Dr 13 my well be Black, they my well be female but I think we’re still going to be waiting for a disabled Doctor until regeneration 14, 15 or 16. It will happen, I’m convinced that it it will, eventually, happen but probably not today.

Now, that’s interesting. According to a new report by disability charity ‘Sense’, 25% of respondents to a survey they conducted have said they avoided talking to disabled people because it made them uncomfortable, they didn’t know what to say to us and they were frightened of causing offense. Not only that, but this reluctance seems to be age related with younger people avoiding conversation more than their older counterparts.

Why? Do they think we bite or that they might catch something unspeakable from us? Are they concerned that we can only talk about things are disability related such as wheelchairs and hearing aids and white sticks? Do they expect us to intersperse our conversations with technical references to nasty medical stuff like invasive tests, incurable conditions, pharmaceuticals and distasteful bodily functions?

Well, I have news for you folks, I, like so many other disabled people, can, and do, talk about so, so much more.

All the time.

In fact, it’s actually hard to shut many of us, like me, up!

I have a similar range of interests to my non-disabled contemporaries. Similar likes and dislikes, similar worries and and fears, similar opinions about similar things, similar funny stories about the exploits of my amazing family. I love eating sushi and all things Italian but dislike curry and anything spicy. I adore watching athletics and gymnastics on TV but get bored stupid by football and rugby. I hate our current Government and all that it stands for, worry about our Nation’s future and all that is just around the corner with Brexit and Trump and North Korea and Global Warming and, wonder what sort of legacy we are leaving for our children to inherit. I can chat about music and films and last night’s terrible TV offerings and Poldark and the latest goings on in Walford. ?I love reading and have so many favourite authors and genres of literature. I like going out for a drink with my friends in the evening and at the weekend and I’m quite good at pub quizzes.

In other words folks, I’m just like you, I just use a wheelchair to get around instead of legs. That’s it.

What’s so scary then and what is it that makes it so? I reckon the problem is routed in unfamiliarity. For too many years disabled people have been brushed to the side and hidden away and non-disabled people have been told that it’s rude to stare. That awkwardness of unfamiliarity begins from a very early age. Small children are hushed and dragged away from us and told not to ask us questions from practically the moment they learn to speak. I once met an obviously exhausted child aged around five or six, on their way home from school, who pointed to my super-duper wheelchair that had headlights and a horn and flashy indicators and asked their parent if they could have one of THOSE for Christmas. Her mother slapped her and pulled her away. Why? I wasn’t offended, I thought it was funny! My friend’s young son, on the other hand, loved it and told his teacher that his Mum’s friend drove her car in the lving room! Hilarious!

What I’d really like to see is far more opportunities for children to meet disabled people from birth onwards and lose the fear. I’d like kids to use their own, natural curiosity and ask us questions without being slapped down and shushed. When my own children were younger, I used to go to their schools to give talks to children in their middle two Primary years about my life and my impairment and how things would be so much better if the world was fully accessible for all, no matter what, and they lapped it up. I listened to their questions and answered them as best I could. Why can’t that happen more often? All children have PHSE lessons where they learn about health and social issues, why can’t other disabled people, like me, be invited to give talks and take the scarey away? Kids could ask questions and find out what makes us tick in a fun and liberating way. Everyone could have some educational fun together. If people were ‘exposed’ to disabled people more, right from the start then maybe they would realise that we are, essentially, just people, the same as they are. If more disabled kids were educated alongside non-disabled kids in mainstream schools and if there were more disabled teachers and youth leaders then maybe the fear would go. It might take a generation to achieve but, with a bit of thought and effort it could happen and then, just maybe, future surveys would find that the awkwardness had gone.

And, I have a tip for all those people, like those questioned by Sense researchers, who are unsure about what they can say to us to avoid awkwardness and offence, why not try ‘Hello’?